Back to the Future 4 “Not Happening,” So Christopher Lloyd Wants Rick and Morty Crossover

Back to the Future Part IV is “not happening,” says trilogy star Christopher Lloyd, who has fantasized about crossing over with Rick and Morty. The Adult Swim animated series, born from a Back to the Future parody, follows the sci-fi misadventures of Morty Smith and his wild-haired scientist grandfather Rick Sanchez, inspired by Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly and Lloyd’s Dr. Emmett Brown, respectively. A meeting between Marty and Doc and Rick and Morty across time and space would be “fascinating,” says Lloyd, a fan of the Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon-created series’ humor and characters.

“I think it’s fabulous. I’ve watched it, I love the humor in it, I love the characters,” Lloyd said at German Comic Con Dortmund. “I’ve had a fantasy that they make another Back to the Future, Back to the Future 4. And Back to the Future 4 — it’s not happening — but if it did, Back to the Future 4 collides with Rick and Morty. Someway, somewhere in another time zone, in another space zone.”

Crossing over the four characters would be “fascinating,” added Lloyd, who imagines the characters sitting down “to have a hamburger or something.”

“I don’t know. But something really way out [there],” Lloyd said. “Maybe a good writer or something. But I think that would be kind of fun.”

Last summer, Lloyd said he’d be “delighted” to return for a fourth Back to the Future “if they could come up with the right idea that extends the story and does it as well as the first three.”

But another trip back to the future depends on director Robert Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale.

“I think, really, the most important thing is if they can come up with the right idea,” Lloyd told the Phoenix New Times. “I think that’s the challenge is to come up with something that really is as good as the originals. I suppose it could happen. I have not heard that they’re looking for that, if they’ve made up their minds… ‘Hey, here’s something we could do,’ and they believed in it then they might get going to do it.”

After Lloyd’s eagerness to return sparked rumors of a franchise revival, Zemeckis said in July 2018 there “will never, ever be, in the most absolutely way, a Back to the Future 4. There will be no more Back to the Future.”

Still, should there be a return to Hill Valley, Lloyd believes another film “needs to kind of convey a message about something that’s important to everyone, universally, like climate change.”

“Some way of incorporating whatever fever is going on at the moment into the film and keep the feeling of one, two and three,” Lloyd said at Niagara Falls Comic Con over the summer. “That’s a tricky, tricky deal. Because you don’t want to do another one and disappoint. So I don’t know. I’d be happy to [return], for myself. But we’ll see.”

New episodes of Rick and Morty Season 4 premiere Sundays on Adult Swim. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.